3 HP
by KennySheep
Summary: A short story about Quote's quest to save the world without picking up anything he doesn't need to.


Quote sat curled up into as tight a ball as he could, trembling like a leaf in the wind and clutching what remained of his stomach. The antenna sticking out of his hat was trying valiantly to pick up every movement in a hundred foot radius, but the cave walls were too thick to pierce with the sensors. Still, what little he could pick up was enough to make him lose hope.

There were heat signatures everywhere. Probably bats , he had seen a lot of them already. Maybe a few of those weird hopping things too. Constant drips from the ceiling were being picked up, and a combination of overly sensitive hearing equipment and the cave's natural echo were making a few drips here and there sound like a torrential downpour. To your average killer robot, this cave would have been a deathtrap. Even to the most determined mimiga warrior this place was a magma filled ungodly hell.

Quote finally had the courage to move his arm. The hole went straight through him, surrounded by jagged twisted metal. Fluids were leaking out, mostly coolant and lubricants he guessed. Gears and wires lay haphazardly in the wound, Quote was amazed he could still move all his limbs at all. Beside him was the corpse of the bat that did this to him.

One bat.

One small, red, insignificant bat.

Quote never saw it coming, he had just walked into the cave after all. The king's throne was so close. He didn't know what he would have done to stop the doctor, but that wasn't the point. The point was that with victory so close, Quote got a little.... careless.

He didn't see the bat coming. He was busy trying to cut down a critter hopping at him, hoping to god it didn't so much as touch him. The slightest breeze could kill him, after all. The critter died with a sword in its head as the bat snuck up for its devastating attack. If flew through Quote's chest like a hot knife through butter. Pain sensors overloaded as the soft flying mammal did its improbably devastating attack, and only a spastic muscle twitch of Quote's hand on his worn and battered polar star saved him from suffering the follow-up killing blow from the creature.

Quote didn't even know how he got so far. Many people offered to trade his battered starting gun for something better, but he was too attached to the little weapon to part ways with it. Even when better weapons were offered for free, he often turned them down. Being weighed down with guns you don't really need is bad, after all.

Even the health tanks, which everyone seemed to think were so vital, were ignored in Quote's single minded quest to save the island. Why go out of your way for life when everything can be dodged so easily, after all. He never knew how frail he was built because he had never before needed to take a hit. He never knew what it felt like.

He knew how it felt now, though.

He was losing power. His sensors showed something was coming, and the signal was so weak and had such low range that Quote knew it must be close. The already dark cave was growing darker as his body automatically diverted power from all unnecessary systems to the life support, so whatever was lurking in that unholy cave could have easily been staring Quote right in the face and he would have never known.

Monster X had been an eye opener for Quote. Too many bullets to easily dodge, too strong to easily kill with the mediocre firepower Quote had brought with him. He had won, but he didn't know how. Slowly dismantling the tank with nothing more than a basic pistol took a miracle, but he pulled it off. The Core too, he had no idea how he survived that fight, yet still he pulled it off without a scratch on him. Maybe these victories were why he never tried to improve himself, the accomplishments made him feel immortal already.

He was almost disgusted at himself. He had accomplished so much, completely flawlessly. Now he was doomed, slowly fading into oblivion because he didn't turn around in time to see one bat that wandered a little too close. The last of his mind slipped away as what little power Quote had left was diverted to life support. A short time latter, the critter Quote's radar had been tracking leapt at the mangled robot. It had seen the body of its friends nearby and was determined for revenge. Quote's body shattered, and the critter walked away content that it had ended the genocide against its people for good. The killer robot was now beyond all repair. The valiant monster would live on in critter and bat legends forever as a wise and noble hero of the people.

One reality shift latter and Quote was standing outside the final cave once again for the first time, still amazed he had come so far without so much as getting touched. He would be crushed under the Red Demon less than 5 minutes later.


End file.
